Grail - By Elizabeth Bear Page 0,36
tales of Tristen Tiger and the Breaking of the world.
But the art of governance—the basis of civilization—is the art of compromise, and it requires an honoring of the social contract by governed as well as governors. No tribe could have everything they wanted under the Captain’s custodianship—sometimes because it was not feasible, sometimes because it was not mete, and sometimes because it was not moral. And so the small grudges grew, when the reign of a Captain did not mean a golden age.
Or rather, in Tristen’s view, colored by his memories of Gerald and Alasdair, it did seem a golden age, those first years under Perceval’s care. Though resources were sparse and privation great, he thought the Captain—advised and assisted by himself, Mallory, Nova, Cynric, Caitlin, Samael, Chelsea, Head, and Benedick—served well. But there were those who seemed to believe that a Captain in the chair should mean their every whim fulfilled, and that Tristen found problematic.
He no longer believed that war was the answer to ills, or even to rebellion, necessarily. For all of him, he could not remember why he’d ever thought in the first place that war could be made to serve any hand without twisting back to strike deep at the wielder, like a viper swung by the tail. He had become, he realized with some irony, something of a pacifist. Not an extremist in that view; he would defend himself when he saw no other opportunity.
But neither could he always see alternatives. The world must be saved, and to be saved it must be united. There was a parable of sons and sticks that seemed applicable.
And so the time passed, and Tristen made himself useful, and tried to keep his claws sheathed as consistently as was safe, and possible.
No more than two years later, Tristen had met with Cynric and Perceval on the Bridge. (Nova was there as well, as she was everywhere.)
He had called the meeting to discuss with them what could be done to preserve the all-essential unity of the world, to foster a sense of social obligation and greater moral purpose in her disparate and competing tribes. While he had spoken, he thought he hid his trembling and nausea well, though he had to resort to his symbiont to conceal the worst of the symptoms of stress.
After explaining, pacing the green grass of the Bridge, he paused, turned to look his Captain in the eyes, and finished, “We must forge a nation from them.”
Cynric stopped him with an upraised hand. He imagined that he and she and Perceval, all in their white draperies, would seem three of a kind to any observer, each narrow as a cable and tall as a pillar—attenuated, as one would expect something not quite gravity-bound to be.
When Tristen turned to his sister, Cynric cocked her head like a curious snake. She entertained the ghost of a smile for him, but it was Nova who spoke. “What greater moral purpose is there than survival? And more important, what greater motivator?”
It was the old Evolutionist argument, and he was as tired of it as he was tired of God. Nova did not always sound like an Angel—or what Tristen thought of as an Angel, with the weariness of long experience, because however she spoke was how an Angel sounded—and so it was easy to find it shocking when the old orthodoxies tripped from her tongue.
“Moral?” Cynric said, while Tristen folded his arms and watched. “I am not sure DNA admits of morality. Like sadism, morality is a human perversion. The compulsion of the individual and the species to sustain itself may be the opposite of morality.”
“We have no greater moral claim on survival than the competition does,” Tristen said, and was unsure if he was agreeing or arguing.
Perceval cleared her throat, leaving Cynric looking at her doubtfully. But Perceval was the Captain, and even Cynric the Sorceress—heretic, turncoat, revenant—might find her sacrifice intimidating. Or worthy of respect, though Cynric, too, had sacrificed most profoundly.
Perceval was gentle with Nova when Cynric would and Tristen could not be, although he knew that gentleness cost Perceval dear. She was training the Angel as much as the Angel was training her, and he knew that she was doing it consciously, with an eye to Nova as her legacy—a Nova who would be less the machine of the Builders, and more something … humane, although Tristen wondered if that wasn’t the wrong word, when humanity so consistently proved itself quite perfectly monstrous.
Perceval laid a